International

Howard subdues Costello, but battle with Beazley looms
By Sunny Sheldon, our correspondent in Australia

So now it's settled. Prime Minister John Howard will lead his ruling Liberal Party at the next federal election in 2007 to seek an unprecedented fifth-term in office. At a joint-party meeting of the Liberal-National coalition on Monday, Howard declared that soundings he had taken from coalition MPs and voters had persuaded him to stay on as leader.

His deputy, Peter Costello, who had made various noises over the past few weeks about challenging Howard, has decided to accept the inevitable and continue on in his role of Federal Treasurer, saying he realizes he does not have the numbers to be a serious contender, at least not right now.

Whether this retreat has damaged Costello's long-term prospects of being Prime Minister remains to be seen. As his supporters were quick to point out, Howard, in a statement circulated to Coalition MPs, has not committed to a full-term of four years if he wins, paving the way for Mr Costello to take over midway in the term.

But for now, there is no doubt that Howard's decision has seen coalition MPs, many in marginal seats, drawing deep sighs of relief. Costello may have steered the country's economy steadily and capably over the past decade, with inflation kept low and a steadily declining unemployment rate, but his popularity rating as a future Prime Minister remains very low.

If anyone is capable of pulling off another victory for the coalition, it will be Howard, according to his colleagues and regular opinion polls that rank him far ahead of his opponent, the far-from horizontally challenged, locquacious Kim Beazley.

"Bring him on" says Beazley, trying to stay en message that a future Labor government led by him will be less mean, more caring and sharing than the edifice that Howard has built over the past decade, especially the last term when the ruling coalition controlled both Houses and was able to deflect or ignore many issues that would have embarassed the Government.

In an attempt to differentiate his party's policies from that of the Liberals, a factor that disenchanted many die-hard Labour voters in years past, Beazley has already promised to shoot down one of Howard's long-held legislative dreams, the deregulation of the labor market.

Aided by a resurgent union movement which has launched an expensive and sophisticated advertising campaign over the Government's workplace reforms, Beazley has already announced that he will tear up the legislation if he is elected to power.

There is no doubt that horror stories, aired over TV as part of the union campaign, of workers forced by rapacious employers to sign individual agreements with fewer benefits, longer working hours etc., is making a lot of voters and many ruling party MPs extremely nervous.

Howard has long argued that such "flexible" working arrangements are essential if Australian businesses, facing increasing competition from comparatively low-wage Asian economic tigers, are to survive. The Government proudly points out that Australia's current unprecedented unemployment rate of around five per cent can be improved only through such reforms.

Opponents, however, beg to differ. They argue that the reforms are aimed at "Americanizing" the workforce, an economy based on low-paid, casual work with minimum social security benefits. And, they claim, new laws that came into effect from July this year to tighten the country's social security system, with the aim of getting more people into paid work, including those with disabilities and parents with children over six years of age, while needed, have been driven by ideology rather than proper thought or planning.

However, most analysts agree that Labour needs to do a lot more bold and innovative policy-work for voters to consider it a genuinely viable alternative to the current Government's amazing run of luck through booming mineral prices and a steadily-growing economy which has survived the dot com crash, Mad Cow disease, Asian flu epidemics etc., with hardly a bump.

The decision by the Reserve Bank on Wednesday to increase interest rates by .25% to check a rising inflation rate, its effect on house mortgage rates on already stretched budgets of the lower and middle-income earners, rising oil prices and the 'sleeper' issues of Howard's seemingly unconditional support for US President Bush over Iraq and now for Israel over the crisis in Lebanon, especially among Australia's large Muslim population, are all issues that are waiting to be exploited by a savvy opposition. Whether Beazley and his team has the 'ticker' to do so is the question.

One thing, however, is certain. he will be up against the most seasoned political operator in Australia today. Disparagingly dismissed once by a former Labour Prime Minister, Paul Keating, as Lazarus with a triple by-pass, Howard has, during his long political career, lost the leadership of the Liberal party, seen off various successors to the position and then regained it to become the second longest-serving Prime Minister of Australia behind Robert Menzies.

Though aged 67, he has lost none of his focus nor his steely determination to hold on to the reins of power as long as he can (or as long as the Australian people wants him to, as he puts it). No wonder his MPs welcomed his decision to stay on this week.

Europe trying to atone for its past sins
European Notebook by Neville de Silva

Last week's diluted statement by the European Union foreign ministers on the Lebanese crisis was symptomatic of the political divisions that exist on the continent.

The draft statement before the foreign ministers called for an immediate ceasefire and labelled Israel's continuous bombardment of Lebanon as "a severe breach of international humanitarian law."

But it was shot down by the UK, whose leader Tony Blair is not only seen by many as President Bush's pet poodle, but also by Germany whose rightwing chancellor Angela Merkel is now being viewed by Bush as another worthy for his White House kennel.

On the other side stood France which, as the current president of the United Nations Security Council, had from the outset demanded an immediate ceasefire before any meaningful action could be taken as a long term solution.
Ultimately the EU statement ended up calling instead for " an immediate cessation of hostilities to be followed by a sustainable ceasefire."

In the diplo-speak of the European Union "cessation" is tantamount to a temporary pause in the fighting whereas a "ceasefire" would mean a much longer end to hostilities until something more durable is worked out by the international community.

This watered-down statement engineered by Britain, which has faithfully followed Washington's lead from Day One despite the growing criticism of Prime Minister Tony Blair in his own cabinet and certainly within the Labour Party and the country, and by Germany shows how the three most important members of the European Union are entrenched on either side of the barricades.

Interestingly this EU statement takes almost the same position taken by foreign ministers when they met in Brussels over two weeks ago. The restatement by the foreign ministers shows the deep divisions found in Europe on the latest round of blood letting in the Middle East or West Asia, perhaps a more accurate geographical description for the region.

If today Britain and Germany give Israel a licence to continue its assault against the people of Lebanon and not just the Hezbollah it is surely because Europe bears much of the blame for what is happening in Lebanon and the Gaza.

It was European anti-semitism, especially in the early 20th century that led to the burgeoning of the Zionist movement and to the British-led Balfour Declaration of 1917 that promised Palestine to the Zionist movement so as to preserve as long as possible the British empire.

Much later Hitler's national socialism drove millions of Jews out of Germany and Europe or into concentration camps and gas chambers. Though today France has taken a more enlightened political stance denouncing Israel's disproportionate response to the killing of some Israeli soldiers and the kidnapping of two others, historically it too is responsible for the mess that the region is in. The current imbroglio has its embryo in the 1916 Sykes-Picot agreement in which Britain and France set down who would control which areas of the Middle East after the end of the first world war.

If these historical machinations and imperatives of empire were responsible for creating the conditions of the current conflict, one cannot ignore some 2000 years of anti-semitism by the Christian church.

The result of this feeling of collective guilt has often led to Europe turning a Nelsonian eye to whatever Israel did in its immediate neighbourhood. No impartial mind could deny that since the state of Israel now exists it should be entitled to its security and the right to defend itself.

But what is now driving majority international opinion and opinion on European streets, is the highly disproportionate response of Israel to the killing and kidnapping of its soldiers.

It is, Lebanon, an independent sovereign state that is taking the brunt of the Israeli onslaught while it's the majority of it’s the civilian population that has little or nothing to do with the Hezbollah, that are the victims of Israeli's military action.

If those like President Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair who is behaving like Washington's running dog, believe that their unequivocal support for Israel is contributing to their war on terror to eliminate Islamic radicalism they are even more naïve than they appear to be.

As though the lessons of Afghanistan and Iraq were not sufficient for Blair to exercise some circumspection, he once more took the lead from President Bush and dived headlong into the Israel-Lebanon conflict.

His uncritical support for Washington has led to dissenting voices in the cabinet, which No 10 has been quick to deny despite widespread coverage of the differences in the British media.

These differences came out in the open for the first time when Jack Straw, former foreign secretary demoted to Leader of the Commons, issued a statement in which he clearly thought that Israel was using "disproportionate action" in dealing with the Hezbollah.

This was in marked contrast to Blair's own position, which was to avoid any criticism of Israel in consonance with the stance taken by President Bush and his secretary of state Condoleezza Rice.

Saying that he found it "difficult to understand the kind of military tactics used by Israel," Jack Straw went on to add: "One of many serious concerns I have is that the continuation of such tactics by Israel could further destabilise the already fragile Lebanese nation."

If Straw was the first cabinet minister to raise the alarm over Blair's overt support for Bush, earlier Kim Howell, a junior foreign office minister was the first to publicly depart from the official line set by his prime minister. Howell called on Israel to "go for Hezbollah…….don't go for the whole Lebanese nation."

Fortunately for Blair the House of Commons is in recess and most political bigwigs are on holiday. But the rumblings in the Labour Party and among some of his cabinet colleagues will not go away easily. He would still have to face the fire when the Labour Party holds its annual conference in Manchester late in September.